


the little matchstick girl ~ a remix

by aleyha



Category: Den Lille Pige med Svovlstikkerne | The Little Match Girl - Hans Christian Andersen, Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Drugs, Gen, Mental Illness, Suicide, allusions to domestic abuse, drug overdose, modernisation of fairy tales
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-10
Updated: 2014-10-10
Packaged: 2018-02-20 15:17:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2433485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aleyha/pseuds/aleyha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a modernisation of h. c. andersen's "den lille pige med svovlstikkerne" slash "the little matchstick girl" </p><p>arguably a fairy tale, stripped bare of magic; whether the ending is happy or not is up for interpretation</p>
            </blockquote>





	the little matchstick girl ~ a remix

 

She wonders how many hits it would take for the cold to go away. 

 

The last night of the year is also the coldest. She can hear it: the gasping shuddering exhales of overtime workers, pulling their scarves up around their mouths and breathing sharply through the wool, boots skidding along the icy ground to make it home for New Year’s Eve. She can smell it too: the crackling sterility of the air, the freezing exhaust of countless cars draped about her skinny shoulders, small particles of frozen dust creeping up her nose. The air hangs heavy, suspended ice drops too small to see nibbling at her bare fingers. 

Biting her white lips, she stuffs her hands in her pockets, fingers reaching down as far as they can, grasping at the fragile seams. Until, _prick_ , her ring finger catches the needle, the clumsily sterilised point digging in under her nail. Her other hand clasps a small bottle wrapped in a transparent bag, small white pills covering the label ( _Cough syrup, specially developed to banish your hacks from your very memory),_ and it tightens at the pain _._ But she keeps moving, and as she wanders down trash-strewn alleys, her eyes noting every abandoned crook, a heavy cloud of despair threatens to suffocate her. It seems even her usual clientele has somewhere to go to ring in the new year. 

Her bruised ribs throb harder than ever; whatever she does, she can’t go home empty-handed.  

Time passes at a gut wrenching pace. She can no longer feel her hands, and she wonders how long it would take for frost to bite off her extremities, her fingertips crumbling away like ashes in the wind. 

_Ashes after flame._

When she finally pulls out her hand, it holds not a needle, but a match. By now she has wandered off into a nicer neighbourhood, and there are candles glittering from the nearest window, five burning sticks waving at her. After a moment — _or a thousand, or a thousand thousand_ — she lights the match. 

Warmth floods, and she is drawn towards the window, at one with the dancing candlelight. _Hello, friends._ She almost giggles. As she greets the fourth candle, the mist of her breath hitting the glass barrier turning the flame into a golden haze, she sees the turkey. It ambles towards her: majestic, featherless, headless. She has never seen a more beautiful specimen, and when he bows before her, little wings spreading out in a clumsy “ta-da!”, she feels the warmth reaching the tips of her toes. 

“Suck on that, frostbite,” she yells, followed by a triumphant laugh.

The turkey nods in agreement, entire body bobbing up and down in lieu of its missing head. Then it freezes, everything blurs, a knife is protruding from its chest; she lets out a shriek. A blink later, and the turkey is lying on a porcelain plate, immobilised by a holiday tradition. 

It’s cold again; the ice is settling in her veins, the match gone to ash. In desperation, she lights another. The blast of heat turns her around, and she stumbles forward, slipping on the icy cobblestone. An evergreen catches her, ever the gentleman. Then, as gentlemen everywhere, he turns monstrous, growing and growing and growing, branches stretching out to touch the buildings lining the street, reaching up towards the burning stars, knitting a web of dark green bristles between the rooftops above her head. He engulfs her. 

She lights a match, and the tree goes up in flame. It lasts only a moment; this brilliant, blazing inferno, before the light gives way to the cold dark. 

_Except._

Where the tree had stood, there now arose from the ashes an elderly woman, long white hair twisted in a clumsy bun. Once more, she feels the cold leaking away, but this time it holds a permanence; less of the fiery illusions of before. The woman, so achingly familiar in the way she’s clasping her shawl to her chest, white bony hands still covered in the grease and dirt she would always track home from the factory, turns to her and smiles. 

She is five, and that same smile greets her as she comes running in after play in the snow; the smile is offering her some cocoa, tucking her into bed, kissing her forehead. The smile comes with the loving gaze of the mother she had never had, the mother who died as she clawed her way out of the womb.  

Her grandmother takes three steps, then wavers, and with every waver a new gust of icy wind hits her, chills her, starves her soul of the love she so desperately seeks. And so she lights another match. 

 

It takes nine hits for the cold to go away, warmth finally settling as she follows her grandmother to oblivion. 

 

 


End file.
